The Joys Of Family and Hearth

We do mostly whole foods eating here. So couponing isn't an option, I mean when was the last time you saw, save a $1.00 on two pounds of apples?   It's unheard of. I have found out how to get the most bang for my buck here in my area. With the rising cost of food and having  to feed a family of 8, whole food nutrition. My food bill can easily sky rocket if I'm not careful. So here's what I do to save. We bought a 1/2 of cow. Big investment, but my freezer is full of meat and I won't have to buy any meat for several months. I should add this is organic, grass-fed, delicious meat!!! I'm also looking into getting chickens this way too, but haven't found a vendor yet. Once a month I travel to a neighboring state and buy my raw milk, grass fed eggs. I will also make several stops while out there and pick up things like a 50lb bag of organic sugar for $37.00. 5 lbs. of Raw Cheese, $20.00. And bulk oatmeal, beans, pasta, etc. For my weekly shopping I ut...

   Date Night is such a cache term. For most people date night is just that, a night out with the boyfriend or husband. When we had our first child we did not do date night! She went everywhere with us. We felt it was necessary. We had our fun, now it was time to focus on raising a family. We were young and foolish still. As we added to our brood, we realized a date night would be great.. but good luck getting someone to babysit 3-4-5 kids at a time!! SO when our kids were little we took "date night" and adapted it to our life. Sometimes "date night" was waking up early, Big Daddy and I get a cup of coffee  and go to a quiet place usually outside if the weather was nice or in a quiet room in the house. We would talk, and talk and connect. Sometimes, when the kids were younger we'd put them to bed, and hubby would go out to a restaurant that had curbside service, he'd bring home and meal and we'd sit in our home-- connecting. Other times, ...

Every year we host an Open House on Christmas Eve. Christmas is my absolute favorite holiday to celebrate! However with Christmas coming so quickly after Thanksgiving, it felt very rushed. This year, our Christmas Eve Open House was a bit different. I lost one of my closest friends to a move far away. On the positive side, this is the first year in my entire life that I was able to celebrate Christmas with my biological father. That has never happened. I can remember as a child wishing/praying for him to come to Christmas. After about 10, I think I gave up on it. My dad found the Lord several years ago, and we have been able to rekindle a relationship.  What a blessing.. What a testimony to God's timing.  What a testimony to unanswered prayers, at that time in my life. God had a bigger, better plan. Reminds me of this:   sometimes i thank god for unanswered prayers remember when you're talkin' to the man upstairs that just because he doesn't answer doesn...

      For the New Year, we decided we would head out to our most favorite place to be. Our camper in Lancaster Pennsylvania. We  did a bowling party with the kids to bring in the New Year, spent the night in our toasty warm camper, went to an awesome breakfast buffet at Yoder's, ate like little piglets, picked up some delicious raw milk, walked the creek and then headed home.    You see, we are preparing for a storm here.   I'm prepared as far as food goes. But we had to prepare the house and Big Daddy.   We only heat our home with firewood. That means a lot of it  had to be brought in.  We had two kids working on that. They are saying this will be the coldest our state has seen in several years.     While I make sure the house is well stocked with food,  And I get out those snow suits, hats, gloves, the drying rack, boots, sleds, thermos' .. etc. etc. Big Daddy is preparing the truck...